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♪ i am michael smerconish in los angeles. we welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. the immigration issue tearing at peoples hearts and minds to the point where the president made a rare concession, but what is the solution on the border mess? and as the special counsel ll l

toils in secrecy, his numbers are dropping and trump's numbers in the gop are in record-setting highs, is that because those that oppose him are abandoning the party all together. steve schmidt, he is the one that chose sarah palin as the running meat and columnist george will is advocating everyone vote democratic to y r quarantine trump. i will ask rob reiner. first, there is no doubt the images are upsetting as is the policy. immigrant children housed in shelters our transported around the country. i will not defend separating children from parents. i am pleased that the president

yielded to public opinion. that is a good thing. people that despise donald trump ought to note he listened to reason and changed his mind. people that don't like what the president is doing on other issues should focus on how it happened and try to replicate it. but the border crisis is not of trump's creation. we cannot allow people's feelings towards the president and the images and sounds of kids to overshadow the reality that we have a crisis that requires resolution, how to control the borders and make immigration an orderly, legal process. as pointed out in national review there is a significant morale cost to not enforcing the border. there is obviously a morale cost separating a important from a child and everyone would prefer not to do it but with the current resources the only practical alternative is letting family units live in the country for the duration. not only does it make a mockery

of the laws it creates an incentive for people to keep bringing children with them. if an adult files an asylum claim he or she is liable to be detained longer than the policy allows. overwhelms the system to house and sort people and the administration's system and policies keep changing. the answer can't be to allow individuals that arrive with kids to gain the system. last night i discussed the roots of the whole crisis on real time with bill maher. >> the drug war is at the heart of this. the reason why people even when they know they are going to be facing horrors like donald trump at the border are willing to make the trek. their own countries are just unliveable. >> in mexico and columbia, the rerouting of the drugs through central america. it has created a horrific environment.

i think the nation is ready for the kind of conversation that you want to have because of the scourge of opiods and heroin. now everyone is within a degree of separation from having a person who is at risk. >> all right. i want to know what you think. this is a provocative question at smerconish.com. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis from central america should drugs be decriminalized? what might the impact of the issue be on the republican party? i spoke earlier with the governor from ohio john kasich. >> did this border issue cost republicans control of the house? >> well, i don't know about that michael. you know, this one has been very, very difficult. i think that people understand this. when you have children that are

involved separated from their family and crying. this gets to the heart of thing. if there can be a recovery, i don't know. there are a lot of things i thought that would result in a republican beginning to question some of what the administration has been doing. you know this has changed things. i understand only 58% approval on the policy as opposed to 85. i am not sure how much the 58% is. if people really understood what is going on. michael, the problem is that we are so divided up into our own team. i wear red. you wear blue. we go to the game and cheer. it is not helpful. not just on the issue of immigration but across the board on so many issues that need to be addressed that are not addressed because of partisanship. i must say what people saw was really breath taking.

this is not the america, michael, you and i learned about from our parents and grandparents. a welcoming, loving country. that is why i believe that people of all stripes were aghast at what they were witnessing. >> i agree with the statement as you framed it. i also worry that those images and sounds from the kids have obscured the very real issue that we have a problem on the border. there are folks coming here and not playing by the rules and that can't get lost in the analysis. >> you know when you think about this if people feel their families are being threatened by drug lords and gangmembers they are go to leave. ure would leave. i would leave. but there is a process to come here. it is called the asylum process.

when you don't have enough of the asylum judges and ways to take your families things break down. this is a humanitarian crisis. when you get a crisis like this you need all hands on deck. you need everybody that can possibly touch the issue. not just the border control or national security or mental health. all of the people that would touch the thing need to be put in a room. then forget the politics and think about the people. that is what the lord wants us to do. think about the way we should treat someone else and the way we want to be treated. then you put a policy together that deals with the crisis. it is just a terrible way to do anything. we went through just a smidge of this in ohio when we thought we had a major ebola crisis.

we got everybody together that could possibly be involved and we sat down and said what's the right thing to do. you can't do it yourself. the leader of the country needs to say let's get it together and figure it out and forget the politics. he is pointing a finger at the congress. >> time to stop pointing fingers. whose fault is it? let's fix it. here is the problem. this is what has everybody upset. i am worried about my primary and general election. let me take care of me first.

michael, in your family if you operated like that your family would fall apart. i am not interested who is pointing fingers. knock it off. we are talking about flesh and blood and a humanitarian crisis on the border of the united states of america. get about fixing it together, everybody. >> final question, if i ask you your plan in 2020 you are not going to give me anything. i will ask a different question. when will you decide your plan for 2020? that you want to be able to answer. >> i have no way of determining that. i am governor. we are up over a half million jobs in the state. we have a couple of billion dollars in the bank from .89 cents when i came in. the people from top to bottom have an opportunity to be

hopeful and think they can have a better life. i can't tell you the political side of this thing. talking about the old days back in pittsburgh saying come on, tell me. michael, i don't know. if you get any ideas give me a call. >> i will do that. thank you for being back. >> michael you are the best. thank you. >> i want to know what you think. go to my website and answer this provocative poll question. if the drug problem is part of t the reason for the immigration problem in -- smerconish, are you selling success or heroin today? typical left wing socialist statement? i am not a typical left wing

socialist. i am saying let's be smart about this. what is driving the crisis? our interdiction efforts in mexico and columbia. rerouting all of the drugs into central america. it is the drug trade and the violence resulting from it causing the families to want to flee where they are coming from. you might have said the same thing if i said ten years ago isn't it time to decriminalize marijuana. you would have called me a left wing socialist then. so far i think it is working out. up ahead new cnn poll shows robert muller is losing favor with americans and over 90% of republicans approve of president trump. but is that because of the growing number abandoning the party all together and george

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>> guess who is going down in the polls, robert mueller.

approval of how he is handling the investigation stands at 41%. many believe it is a serious matter that should be investigated the constant criticism by president trump seems to be taking the poll. poll numbers plummet on the democrat inspired and paid for witch hunt. his numbers are 32%. james comey, 28%. president trump 40%. the investigation is not a popularity contest and he has been operating in secrecy, could it impact an impeachment debate if there were evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors? tom, what are you thinking as you look at the polling data? >> well, i think michael it reflects to me that the

investigation and all of the investigations regarding the issue have dragged on way too long. you know the fbi almost two years ago began what we now call the collusion investigation of the trump campaign. now over a year ago mueller takes it over and where is that at. we have seen the charges robert mueller has brought. we don't know who if anyone they directly included with. after all of the investigation we have seen no evidence or charges that actually prove the original allegation that the trump campaign or members of the trump campaign included with the russians. the public is getting fed up with the fact that all of the investigations seem to bring no

real resolution. there are all kinds of activities and committee hearings and reports. my term for this is dynamic stagnation. all of this dynamic activity but everything is stagnant, nothing has changed. the director of the fbi solution to a handful of senior agents that appeared botched or deliberately obstructed the clinton investigations e-mail and foundation and his answer is to conduct training about the lack of basis. that's absurd. >> put up on the screen the favorable and unfavorables for the president and special counselle mueller. the president's favorable rating is higher but unfavorable number is much higher as well. there are some that are undecided about comey and

mueller. the strategy of delaying whether he will sit down while meanwhile. he is up early at him again with a twitter feed banging him down in a public way might be part of a calculated strategy. by the time that he does finish the probe a certain part of the american public is predisposed not to believe it. >> you know the president was getting conflicting advice from his legal scholars that have gone on the various networks saying he shouldn't agree to be interviewed by mueller. others say do it and get it over with. we will have to wait to see with that. but the longer that it drags on with no resolution and particularly in the mueller or the ig's investigation, that

does not help anyone. is the clinton foundation and e-mail investigation reopened or on going? we don't know. the fisa issue whether false information was provided to get the wiretap and people in the trump campaign. where is that? is it under investigation? we know the utah u.s. attorney has been brought back tock washington to apparently work with the ig because the ig has no authority to do a grand jury or wiretaps or the sensitive techniques that are routine for the fbi. i think that is the problem. now, going on almost two years of the investigation what do we really know. and is any real discipline or action being taken against any of the culprits being named.

>> i will leave you and everybody else with a final thought. you, tom fuentes, the ultimate company man when it comes to the fbi put in my head that all of this criticism leveled at law enforcement, i wonder about the long-term implication. i worry that the old desire on a local level to bring in the feds. the repetition of the federal government and fbi, it was on a pedestal. i hope that is not tarnished in a permanent type of way. we will come back and have the conversation. thank you tom. >> thank you, mike. >> who cares if people are tiring of mueller. time to grow up. i guess you are saying hang in there as long as it takes. i made the observation that perhaps the president's game is rope-a-dope. remember, just wear out your opponent. because as mueller is still

toiling and trump is banging him publicly. it is having a huge impact among some americans. smerconish, poll on mueller is meaningless. judges, firefighters do jobs by popularity polls. >> this is where you are wrong. to the extent -- remember what will happen. mueller will hand rosenstein a report. the numbers are indicative of the public's willingness to be fair when they judge the report. if the cake is baked and people don't want to the hear it because they think it is fruit of a poisonous tree it is all very relevant to where he ends up. still to come, when i left the republican party in 2010 i was ahead of the curve. this week the gop operative who

ran mccain's campaign and chose sarah palin as the running mate publicly declared his defection. is it finally time to rethink the two party system? and the immigration debate got ugly fast when hollywood celebrities join the civil war like this vicious tweet from peter fonda.

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>> steve schmidt made national headlines this week announcing he was quitting the republican party. the analyst that ran john mccain's campaign and notoriously lasting for sarah palin to be the vp nominee

tweeted 29 years and 9 months ago i registered to vote and became a member of the republican party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. today it is fully the party of trump. schmidt likened the separation of immigrant children and parents to the same evil that separated families. he quoted ronald reagan's tombstone and wrote reagan would be ashamed of mcconnell and ryan and all the rest and concluded the independent voter will be aligned with the only party in america that stands right and decent and remains -- that party is the democratic party. and trump's friendliness with

enemies and criticizing friends like canada. other gop members fled the party in recent years. will wrote an op-ed in the "washington post" to quarantine trump. i switched from r to and i published an essay. for me the party is over. i wrote the national gop is a party of exclusion. dominated on social issues by the religious right with zero discernible outreach by the national party to anyone that doesn't fit neatly within its parameters and instead the gop has extended itself to the fringe and throwing under the bus long-standing members. i was not comfortable joining the democratic party. now schmidt joins the 45% of us that don't id as r or d and i

say it is time that our voices are represented in closed primary states on debate stages and in the media. joining me now is greg orman. you will remember that he left the republican party to become an independent and ran a close race for the united states senate in 2014, ultimately lost to pat roberts. you did not lose to the evangelical leader. but react to the news of steve schmidt. >> well, i think we have seen a lot of the high profile defections from the republican party. frankly they are lagging indicators, not leading indicators. you left the party in 2010. the fact is americans have been leaving both parties in droves really since 1998. and they are doing it for a

range of reasons. but most notably because this system of government is not working for them. the average american household hasn't seen a pay increase since 1999. think about that, the amount of time it takes a child to go from being born to graduate high school, that is how long it has been. obviously they are dissatisfied with both parties. they are reacting with their feet. >> there are some that will look at you and stood the record and say that greg orman is a smart guy, princeton educated, successful businessman, entrepreneur. i had a conversation with bill maher about this. >> we tried many times to change it. third parties just wind up making the better party lose too

many times. >> i have radio listens that hold me accountable for the election of donald trump. i admitted i didn't vote for him or her either. i voted for the libertarian ticket and i am proud of the vote. take it up with the 1.2 million that were eligible and didn't exercise their right. >> what is your response? >> i think if you look at what is happening in the country today. we travel throughout kansas and we see voters want something different. they want leaders that are going to tell the truth, who are going to serve them and not special interests and party bosses. what has happened is that both parties have done a lot of work. the one thing that they agree on in keeping up competition. we are working not only to get

people elected but to break down the barriers that both parties use to deprive voters of legitimate choices. we had the opportunity to talk about some of those things we are working on. but the biggest barrier is psychological. 44% of americans are politically independent. if they just got behind independent candidates, the candidates would start winning, creating a third force in the politics and create a better position to hold both parties accountable to meet the needs of the american american people. >> if we could establish a beach head in the senate it could only take three or four or eyes to be elected and they would have to play ball with you to get anything done. an independent caucus could hold the cards. >> that is exactly what we were trying to accomplish in kansas in 2014. i was deeply concerned that

because we were not solving problems as a nation that our standard of living and our status in the world was at risk. if we can get that fulcrum. if we can get a few people elected to the u.s. senate who can mediate between democrat and republicans and determine who is the majority leader and who holds the gavels, we could get focused on a problem solving agenda. william allen white the famed editor once said when anything is going to happen in america it is going to happen first in kansas. we are looking to make that happen. >> we might not be a majority but we are a plur ality. the passion exists on the fringes, and that is why we have seeded the debate. they are the loudest voices. all of the people watching us

that say i don't feel comfortable as an r or a d need to get off of the sofa and get into the game. good luck for that. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to remind you to answer the survey question at smerconish.com. it is a provocative one. i can't wait to see how this will turn out. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis from central america should drugs be decriminalized. more and more political celebrities have been going low instead of high. does the vulgarity diminish the message? i am going to ask rob reiner. g , ...aging everything. we also have the age-old problem of bias in the workplace. really... never heard of it. the question is... who's going to fix all of this? an actor? probably not. but you know who can solve it? business. because solving big problems is what business does best. so let's take on the wage gap, the opportunity gap,

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we danced in a german dance group. i wore lederhosen.man. when i first got on ancestry i was really surprised that i wasn't finding all of these germans in my tree. i decided to have my dna tested through ancestry dna. the big surprise was we're not german at all. 52% of my dna comes from scotland and ireland. so, i traded in my lederhosen for a kilt.

ancestry has many paths to discovering your story. get started for free at ancestry.com. >> the dialogue in america is across the board, but most publicly visible in politics and in showbiz. calli calli robert deniro's outburst, this in the "new york times" warning democrats this is not the way to win the midterms or defeat trump and set off a debate about whether the time for civility is

in the past and now a new era of incivility to trump himself showing trump's behavior back to the campaign trail. the president is a bad influence. but i trace the origins back further to the early 90s and the rise of a polarized media and that technology racheted things up and the ability to behave badly not in person and i am not sure it will do anything but make people more defiant in their corners. i am really big on the time and the place out look of life. that is not a popular stance these days. however we got here, we are here now. how are we going to get out. since i am in hollywood i thought let's check in with rob reiner, the actor that you remember from all in the family and director of classics like this is spinal tap, stand by me, the princess bride, when harry met sally, a few good men and

the american president. his latest, shock and awe is about the reporters that uncover the falsehood about iraq's weapons of mass destruction that led us to war. >> thanks for having me. >> i would be derelict if i did not ask you about roseanne without roseanne. >> yeah. i will be curious to see what they do with that. i mean there is room for a red state/blue state show. norman leer and i were talking about this the other day. we are more polarized now than we have ever been. there is definitely room for that. i will be curious to see how they handle it. >> in all of the states that i flew over to get here from philadelphia, there is a perception that when you get to the town it is all about ideology more than money. put that to rest. >> i think that it is about issues for sure. i don't know about ideology.

you are in liberal hollywood. there is a reason why i believe that artists and film makers and actors are liberal, because to be a liberal is to have your mind open. you have to have your mind open to experience all of life and to be able to process it and communicate it. we are liberal on certain issues. i would not call it ideology. >> do some of your neighbors and colleagues take it too far? i could go through a laundry list of bad behavior. the most recent example is the peter fonda tweet about baron trump in a cage. >> i didn't see that one. that does not sound good. i did not see it though. i would say you are on to something here. i would not put it at the feet of hollywood or at the feet of

trump. i think social media play a big part in that. you can tweet out something or put it on social media and you are hidden. you are not right out there. you are not having to take responsibility for it. i think it will give people lnts to go further than they might go and certainly the president has given us a license to say all kinds of things. >> do you subscribe to the michelle obama logic when they go low we go high or do you feel like you fight them on the right turf? >>u uryou have to go high and fight. you can't just be in the mud. you have to hit hard back and also have to have a high standard. >> you run the risk of tossing the midterm election to the gop if perceived like people are beating up on him unfairly. >> you have to energize your

base. there is no question about it. what you don't want to do is to energize the other side even more. there are ways that do not energize the other side. you have to strike that balance. >> how you walk the fine line is that balance. >> you have to attack what needs to be attacked. there is a lot to attack there in president trump. you also have to offer a positive message of what to do to make things better. it is like i said satire. always tearing things down. that is fine. you tear things down that deserve to be torn down. you have to say what would you put in its place. what would you say would be making the world better? you have to present that as well. >> your new movie, "shock and awe," a tribute to those sounding the alarm about the

iraq invasion but nobody was listening. you must have made the film because you worried it would happen again. >> i was of draft age in the vietnam war and i was against that as i was the war in iraq. i couldn't believe we were about to go to war in 2003 based on a lie again. it happened twice in my lifetime. i wanted to get the story out of how does this happen. how does the government? i understand propaganda. every administration needs propaganda to sell a policy or to sell a rational ato go to wa. but to lie, that to me was too much. i worked for a long time figuring out the best way to tell it. i found the four journalists that got it all right. they figured it out. they couldn't break through. >> i am a bit embarrassed because i consider myself to be

fairly well read until i watched shock and awe, i did not know of their efforts. >> i did not either. here are four journalists doing the principal thing you need to do in journalism. if the government says something you only have one question to ask. is it true. that is the job of journalists. the fact that these guys were getting it right were asking the tough questions, getting it right and nobody listened to me was astounding. that is why i made the movie. >> congratulations and thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> still to come your best and worst tweets and facebook comments like this. does vulgarity minimize the message? you are quibbling over the make of weapon used to vanquish a dictator metaphorically. >> unless you think i am prudish. you should hear me when i am on

a commercial break. i don't think it is effective as a political strategy because it adds to the perception of the piling on of the president, especially by the hollywood elite. still to come, we are about to give you the final results of the survey question. you have a last chance to go and vote at smerconish.com on this issue. ♪ if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months, ... with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. otezla may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting.

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i we worked with pg&eof to save energy because wenie. wanted to help the school. they would put these signs on the door to let the teacher know you didn't cut off the light. the teachers, they would call us the energy patrol. so they would be like, here they come, turn off your lights! those three young ladies were teaching the whole school about energy efficiency. we actually saved $50,000. and that's just one school, two semesters, three girls. together, we're building a better california. friend just text ed me and

said i kind of missed the logic of legalization. if we legalize heroin, won't people still flee to the u.s.? the theory as bill was expresing is that you're undermining the illegal drug trade in trade in central america and it would cause people to stay in their native country. time to see how you responded. if the drug trade is to blame for the migration crisis drugs be decriminalized? thanks for that. wow. 59% say yes. that's really interesting. but he would be thrilled with that, wouldn't he? 59% say yes. if this is what's driving it then decriminalization is something that we should be considering. maybe that says something about our audience. i don't know. here's what else you've been thinking during the course of the program. what do we have? hard drugs should never be

legal. does anyone want them to be as common as cigarettes or beer? i think legalization would usher in an era of unpres decedent ee addiction. jeffrey, may i recommend a good piece? i'll tweet it out from the guardian on what's going on in portugal because catholic conservative portugal overwhelmed by an opioid and heroin epidemic did this. now of course treatment is a big part of what they're offering it's knot just fair. treatment recognition is a critical component, but thus far, they've had a positive result. do some reading on the portugal experiment. what else? don't be fooled. your republican comes through loud and clear. hey, peach pie, you know what's funny, to you, it comes through loud and clear. believe me, i could fill this screen can tweets from this hour

of people who say i'm so sick of you, the lefty they put on cnn. over the span of a program, i think somewhere it all comes out in the mid m. what else? please tell us why you haven't joined the democrat party. because the ds are not offering me solutions with which i'm comfortable. what exact ly is the democratic plan relative to fixing the border? okay. i get everybody kicking the crap out of the president for separating families. i don't want him separate iing families. but as you heard me say, the underlying crisis is not of his doing. i mean, the underlying crisis was created by 20,000 apprehensions at the border going to 50,000 this year. that's not because of donald trump. i don't like his solution, but where's the democratic alternative because i'm paying close attention and haven't heard it. catch up with us anytime. i'll see you next week. ahh... summer is coming.

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tonight on the axe files. marco rubio. the son of cuban immigrants weighs in on the zero tolerance policy and battle at the border. >> i'd do almost anything to protect my children. zpl the mueller investigation. >> the best thing for the president and country is for him to finish his investigation to be thor reand that the entire truth come out. >> and republicans relationship with the president. >> mo matter how much